Not My Avatar
by goetzte
Summary: Looking back upon his formative years, a non-bender recalls an argument with his "blessed" fire-bending friend, whose ardent endorsement of the young Avatar creates a rift between the two companions. In his explanation, the narrator unveils other forms of deception to which he himself fell victim, revealing his own insecurities and the strain present in relationships of all kinds.


"Not My Avatar"

A while back, during my younger years as a street-crawler, as a bruised brawler, as a reckless renegade, I entered into a stage of my life which I envisioned as a glorious renaissance. It was only fitting. The city was changing, and so too the world, its nations sprawling outward, its people clawing at the rim of prosperity, its entire being flexing the muscles of its newly-formed body. This, I am told, was supposedly an era of peace, the garden of my youth and a time of uninterrupted progress. One might say rebirth. But, as with all births, the new age had its share of trepidations, pains, and morning sickness. I, in my foolishness, became entangled in the depths of this madness. Our world is a strange one indeed.

In the beginning of my metamorphosis, I traveled to the home of a friend, his apartment situated in the dense, metallic forest of buildings locked between immaculate, white mountains and the calm, brooding sea. This place was known as Republic City, the nexus of unity and greatness established by an all-too optimistic leadership headed by the one and only Bridge between Worlds, the omnipotent and awe-inspiring Avatar. Though the title of Avatar has passed to a new bearer in my lifetime, my name for this grand peacemaker has never changed. The Avatar for me is called oppressor.

My friend's name was Yonphu, and he was blessed. As a youth his grandfather showed him how to make fire dance. Through his veins and those of so many others the power to control the elements flowed like a manipulative elixir, inaccessible to people of my breed. Nonetheless, this power to tame flames or contort water or even employ the very earth beneath us as if it were but a puppet dominated the lives of the blessed and the lowly alike.

Yonhpu lit a fire in the hearth of the living room when I first arrived. Leaning over the timbers, he extended his hands almost in blessing and breathed slowly as the heat emanating from his palms burst forth into radiant tongues of fire that licked the wood and propagated their blaze. Yonphu asked if I wanted a drink. He called me by my old name, a title which bears only pain onto my present self, like a foul taste of a breathe of putrid air. I accepted his offer. And he brought me tea, heated by hand. The cup which held the simmering, aromatic liquid belonged to another age. It felt dainty with its faded and artistic markings, not unlike the decorations of the room in which we stood: the walls shone a dull gray, bare except for a solitary window; the cushions around the hearth reflected subdued tones of orange and brown; a table wedged in the corner sported decaying picture frames and trinkets, yet among these relics sat the curved frame of an untouched radio, glazed with a maple veneer that beckoned to me like a [traffic] signal in the fog-swept streets.

My fascination with the pristine wooden box did not go unnoticed, as its owner shuffled toward the device with his cup in hand and activated its dials. The broadcast fizzled to life, filling the room with a booming announcer's voice that seemed to battle with the glow of the hearth for dominance in the dingy dwelling. The radio's bombastic projection soon brought a grin to my friend's worn face, not because of its tone I realized, but because of the contents. At the time the two of us had already cut deep into our third decade of existence, yet we stared at the machine with looks of childish obsession. The focus of the broadcast was the recent arrival of the Avatar to our fair metropolis.

Admittedly, most every word that seeped into my ear arrived as news to a mind which was only partially aware of the prolific travails of previous Avatars but ignorant of the exploits of the reigning idol. Yonphu, though, seemed already immersed in the mystified life of the figurehead so pompously lauded by the announcer: A full-fledged bender of fire, earth, and water by age four, a pupil of the Great Airbending Master Tenzin, a member of the up-and-coming, pro-bending trio known as the Fire Ferrets, and the foremost shock was that this combative, unconquerable master was but a girl of seventeen. Her name, which strung a smile upon Yonphu's face whenever it was mentioned, resides as an enduring strain within my tattered conscience: Avatar Korra.

"I bought this radio a few days ago," Yonphu said, motioning to the spout of knowledge blaring before us. "Mostly for this," he said eagerly. "Wait, you'll hear soon." The rambling voice of the announcer subsided suddenly, replaced instead by a sweetly toned recording. The feminine pitch tickled and prodded me like an invasive spirit, but Yonphu was simply entranced. The Avatar herself was speaking, not through the radio it so appeared, but directly to my weary cohort. The voice, both soothing and enervating, assured a restoration of peace and balance to the world, a promise which Yonhpu sipped like nectar right along with the tea that flowed from the clay cup in his hand. But I saw the Avatar for what she truly was—a schoolyard bully abusing her elemental powers to mesmerize and entertain. Had the man next to me not heard of her assault on a helpless protestor or the flaunting of her talents in the arena or her criminal evasion of the authorities? I lifted the teacup to my mouth, and the taste was bitter indeed.

"I think it's great that she's training with the Airbending Master over on Air Temple Island," Yonphu's voice resumed, the wooden box still humming the Avatar's praise. "Avatar Korra is just such a great bender, ya know? She inspires me to practice harder and to fully concentrate on my abilities. . ." his eyes trailed off and finally settled on the radio with such grace and benevolence that he seemed to gaze directly through the inner workings of the machine to find only peace beyond its reflective exterior.

"Whadya think?" my friend said, breaking from his apparent daydream.

"Think it's all a little dangerous. Misplaced authority I'd say, giving such privilege to a girl barely able to find her way around the crown city of an empire."

"How would you act? She's seventeen. Think of yourself at that age. Think of yourself now."

"Well, maybe I would be the same, but I'm nothing like her. The Avatar has more responsibility. She's endowed with power that no one can even approach. She has an advantage over the rest of us, and she's abusing that edge. Just think about what she did when she got here. Thievery, intimidation, evading the real authorities, and what does she get off with? A stay at a secluded island, all her needs catered to."

"She's the Avatar. What do you expect, the same treatment as the average citizen?" Yonphu grasped his cup more firmly then, as if it alone held his flustered body in balance.

"No, but I'm suggesting a bit of justice. It should be expected that the rules hold up for everyone, not only the second-class."

"What are you talking about? Who's second-class?"

"I mean what I say. Some of us have to work like slaves to get half the dues the Avatar gets with the raise of a finger. It's tiring. I feel helpless. Other people have it so easy. I feel like I'm rowing up a cold river against current and these other guys, they just float on by effortlessly, and you know who's leading the charge for them? The Avatar, clearing the way for her pious brethren—"

"You mean people like me?"

"Don't act so offended. You don't understand. You don't have to face the same problems we do."

"Really? Really! Look around. Want to see how I'm living, up on the 'top rung' with the Avatar's esteemed benders! Do you call this easy?" His eyes grew wide, his legs hunched, anger dripping from his face in sweat and hot breathe. Then the fire came, following that foreboding steam, rising quickly from his wrists to sweep into orange tails. I leapt back, tumbling to the dusty floor with the frame of a demon bearing over me, relentless, terrifying, and crackling hot with embers. Yonphu was no longer a man, transcending instead to an apotheosis of fire and flesh, standing before me an oppressive glare, the once solemn and weakened eyes ablaze with livid excitement, the mouth wide-stretched, the seemingly thin muscles pulsating over my decrepit form. And yet he ceased, the flames departing into the cool air, and he looked suddenly sad and sank to his knees, peering into my fearful countenance with dampened remorse.

"I . . . I'm sorry, it's just—you should leave." He rose evanescently from the ground and drifted on light feet to the next room, leaving me still panting beyond the hearth.

I looked toward the radio in disgust, projecting the guilt from the argument onto its shimmering façade as I stretched my vulnerable body up from the spark-bitten floorboards. Some smoke still lingered in the stale air, but no other trace of Yonphu remained. I trotted toward the corner table to confront my new enemy, buzzing softly now like the improvised tune of a street performer carried from afar by the breeze. I reached for the radio dial, unknowing of what might emerge from behind the fettered veil yet longing to destroy the source of its coercive power. The knob rotated smoothly and cut through the sounds of the city, the clamor of beginnings and of endings, of disputes and of resolutions, of the ruling and of the oppressed. But my hand settled there amidst the mass of noise, as a sliver of some undiscovered light crept slowly from the crevice. It began as a low rumble, building until the words became distinct. The message seemed extracted from my very thoughts, a recreation of my own convictions that spoke to me as the Avatar had spoken to Yonphu. But this was not Avatar Korra. She was not my Avatar. But this sonorous voice, from whatever hull it originated, that was my Avatar, my liberator, my guide.

Without warning, the broadcast died. The room grew darker, though still illuminated by the enduring flames of the hearth, and I gazed mournfully at the box which had replenished my soul, not by instilling my lonely spirit with warmth or love, but by invigorating my wayward mass with an affirmation of the hatred which I felt, which I still feel, though the loathing has found itself another target. The heated light reflected off of the radio's curved frame and revealed the smallest trace of ash on the otherwise radiant surface. I grabbed the tea cup given to me by a once-loyal friend before I departed from the silent apartment. Outside, the night greeted me with rain. The street lamps, hanging heavy with their dew, fought dimly against the gloomy shadow, and I saw across the way one of the blessed, deflecting the liquid onslaught with the skyward sweeping of her hand while I became wet. I stood looking at the waterbender, a women clothed in dry robes, and felt the cold rainfall pound my hair, creep along my skin, intrude on the infant fury growing within. The cup slipped from my numb fingers and met the pavement in a ripple of shards and brown slosh. _It can be remade_, I thought, _an earthbender can craft another cup just as before_. I watched the jagged remnants float along the shallow current until the street drain swallowed them. They would be carried to the sea, settle into the sediment there, never again to constitute that brittle chalice, nor would they rejoin each other in a single from. Yet alone they remained indestructible witnesses that would endure as sun-bleached sand or fodder for the seabed.

I thought myself a proud man as I sauntered dripping through the streets. My soul was set on escape and ascension, rebellion against the oppressors from whose bondage I could break free, so long as that voice was obeyed. But my servitude to the voice produced no lasting reward; rather, its commands perpetuated my fear. I cannot claim regret for my actions, the worse of which were yet to come—they were a truthful expression, but without restraint the recurrent failures of my past ensnared me, inescapable as they are. The Avatar is no more a friend to me now that she was then, but I know now that she was not the source of my misery. Since that night, I have not laid eyes on Yonphu, the fiery bender who by now must feel as weak and old as I. If I was a younger man, perhaps we could speak once more and drink tea from fresh, silver cups as resplendent as the face of a talking box. But I am weary, and reconciliation will grant me no peace. And the cups, no matter how jeweled, would still be stained.


End file.
